September 1, 2006
A week ago, I wrote:
The world is full of beautiful and strange things. Indonesian insects with eyes on stalks, African mole rats, Amazonian parrots and Chinese snakehead fish.
We can get so caught up in the exotic world of other places that we forget the strange and fascinating right under our own…
August 31, 2006
Because it isn't official without one.
Make your own.
August 31, 2006
Apparently not important to talk about:
A would-be health care debate was whittled down to basically a one-candidate question-and-answer session Tuesday at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.
Nancy Boyda, who is running for the Kansas 2nd District congressional seat, was the only candidate to show,…
August 31, 2006
Thanks to Grrlscientist for helping me learn that:
You Are Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
You take the title "mad scientist" to the extreme -with very scary things coming out of your lab.
And you've invented some pretty cool things, from a banana sharpener to a robot politician.
But while you're busy turning…
August 31, 2006
I've said it before, I'll say it again (and again, and again), Ted Stevens is an effing moron. He's the one who put an anonymous hold on a bill that would create a database of government spending. Why? The man who demanded his $250 million bridge to nowhere rather than aid to Katrina was worried…
August 30, 2006
A while back I pointed out a new group in Ohio dedicated to helping protect Ohio's schools against foolishness, and that the biggest target was one Deborah Owens "Truly A" Fink. She's been described as Ohio's answer to Connie Morris, and frankly, I don't want to know what that question could have…
August 30, 2006
In response to this week's Ask a Scienceblogger and an essay from the National Review, I'm posting a guest response from Jim. Jim is currently being eaten by a bear. My only request is that you consider the possibility that bears, not pirates, are the cause of global warming. The data speak for…
August 30, 2006
Chad posts this interesting comment from Chuck Klosterman IV:
It strikes me that every wrongheaded sentiment in society ultimately derives from the culture of inherent, unconditional rightness. As I grow older, I find myself less prone to have an opinion about anything, and to distrust just about…
August 30, 2006
From MyDD's list of 40 House Longshots:
KS-2 Ryun Ex-miler Jim was held to 56%, three points behind Bush in this district. Kansas Republicans are splintering with prominent moderates fleeing to the Democrats. Kathleen Sebellius is a strong favorite to repeat as Governor and GOP anti-evolution…
August 29, 2006
The words of a HUD spokeswoman on New Orleans:
"It's really a sick, twisted -- I don't even want to refer to it as a joke," HUD spokeswoman White told CNN. "At this point, it's not funny."
You might think she was talking about the fact that people are still waiting for trailers, or that power and…
August 29, 2006
The stupidity of this take on why 9/11 matters is agonizing. We have to remember because … it helps the president's poll numbers. I won't re-debunk the silliness of the Patriot Act arguments, except to say that the Patriot Act, illegal wiretapping, or biometric whatzits wouldn't have prevented 9/…
August 29, 2006
My copy of the paperback of the Republican War on Science is en route, and until it arrives, I'll let you ponder a much shorter version.
Thanks to KS RINO for bringing it to my attention.
August 28, 2006
The Wichita Eagle editorializes on drought, a topic we've discussed before:
This summer, Kansas streams had "less volume of water than at any time since records have been kept," including the Dust Bowl years, said Steve Adams, natural resource coordinator for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and…
August 28, 2006
Answers in Genesis or Hitler? One said:
In spite of all the variation that we find within the human race, they are all descendants of Adam and bear his resemblance. God also created other kinds of creatures, such as apes, which display significant variation within their kind. But there is an…
August 28, 2006
When I visited the emptied hole that dominates America's leading city several years ago, a policeman seemed unable to keep himself from describing how people had cast themselves from the upper floors to avoid being trapped and then burning. Though no one needed to be told the consequences, the…
August 27, 2006
Via DefCon Blog and the 9th floor project comes this video of the fate of one embryo that could have been used for life-saving research. This is the choice: to destroy embryos (or as we've recently learned, not destroying them) in research, or to destroy them in the trash when there's no longer a…
August 27, 2006
Last week the weekly carnival of the best Kansasish blogging got one submission. Yers truly was moving between sites, but I don't know what anyone else's excuse is. Kansans, Kansas Citians or anyone who has ever been to Kansas or seen it on a map should submit their entries now, now, now.
August 27, 2006
Ask A ScienceBlogger:
The destruction of the rainforest was a hot-button topic in the early '90s, but I haven't heard anything about it in ages. Are the rainforests still being destroyed wholesale? Are they all gone? Is it still important? Is the coffee I drink making it worse, and is "free trade"…
August 26, 2006
Via the Salt Lake Tribune, we learn that Utah's "divine design" advocate has been watching too much HGTV, and not enough History Channel:
"I don't think there's a racial [sic] bone in my body," Buttars said in an interview on radio station KCPW Tuesday. "I don't see black and white. I see people. I…
August 25, 2006
I know that true Sciencebloggers don't link to Billy D's blog, but there's just too much amusement to be had there. His latest shows that not only did he clearly fail biology (and math), but literature isn't his thing either. Billy explains:
The Nazi emphasis on proper breeding, racial purity,…
August 25, 2006
The world is full of beautiful and strange things. Indonesian insects with eyes on stalks, African mole rats, Amazonian parrots and Chinese snakehead fish.
We can get so caught up in the exotic world of other places that we forget the strange and fascinating right under our own noses.
As fortune…
August 24, 2006
WorldNetDaily seems to endorse Nancy Boyda.
I don't know what to think.
August 24, 2006
On one hand, SurveyUSA's finding that a plurality of Americans think we are losing the war on terror (45% think terrorists are winning, 41% think we are, 2.4% MoE) is bad. So is the finding that a quarter of the respondents think it's time for a draft.
But I suppose there's a silver lining in the…
August 24, 2006
One of the measures I use to judge whether someone is a serious thinker in Kansas politics is by seeing where they stand on water policy. It seems like there are drought warnings every summer, and those droughts have let other states leap ahead of Kansas in wheat production – a major part of our…
August 23, 2006
A repost from a year ago today.
Intelligent Design decision boon to other states | LJWorld.com:
Dear Members of the Kansas State School Board,
I am the Welsh Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I have a number of colleagues at Kansas State and the…
August 23, 2006
Shelley of Retrospectacle asks:
"Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?"
The answer, of course, is complicated.
As I've said before, I know that…
August 23, 2006
Reposted from the old TfK.
In Pete Seeger's Where Have All the Flowers Gone, he tells this joke:
A couple hundred years ago a shipwrecked sailor drifted for weeks till he saw land. He crawled up the beach not knowing what country or continent he'd landed on. He staggered up the bluff, and at the…
August 23, 2006
August 1 brought a thrilling result, the overthrow of the creationist majority on the Kansas Board of Education. Unfortunately, there remain two races where creationists won and where we need to take the seat in the general election.
The picture above shows 4 of the 5 Democrats in the race. Two…
August 22, 2006
This is part of an ongoing series of posts deconstructing SurveyUSA's state-by-state polls of Presidential approval, Senator approval, and Governor approval. Today SUSA released their latest gubernatorial results.
Kathleen Sebelius is a popular lady. For a Democrat in Kansas, that's fairly…
August 22, 2006
The Times reports that Venom Runs Thick in Fish Families:
The study, published in June in The Journal of Heredity, analyzed and compared DNA sequences from 233 species and used the results to create a new family tree for spiny-rayed fishes. That group includes many types of toadfish, scorpionfish (…
